Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
While everyone is gaga for the Kindle Fire, according to reports, Barnes & Noble has been working on the next Nook Color. Get ready for a fall color-eBook-reader smack down. LET’S GET READY TO sit down, have some tea, and read to a nice book before bed. The Digital Reader has three, that’s right three…
You presumably deal with a lot of weird stuff when you work at a urology clinic. But dealing with a walk-in patient who’s severed his arm with a homemade guillotine is probably a new one. The man in Bellingham, Washington, was living in a transient camp near the clinic when he used his guillotine to…
Prison is a sad, cold, horrible place to be. What reminds you of home more than a hot, home-cooked meal? Nothing. Since these prisoners can’t go home— Maybe ever—they have to bring home to the cell block. Meet Richard Alley. I call him Chef Richard Alley. He was the most charming and gregarious man we…
Google Street View is a magical realm of accidental crimes in progress, fires, and other assorted serendipitous fun. Now, you’ll be able to scroll around the inside of businesses! Which is cool—but here’s how it could be cooler. The aimlessness of Street View is what makes it so fun. You can “wander” from block to…
When Google TV arrived last year, it possessed promise and potential that was never quite realized. Now Google TV 2.0 is here, armed with apps and a new content discovery system. And the search giant thinks they’ve got it right this time. https://gizmodo.com/google-tv-review-its-kinda-the-future-5672946 Google TV still revolves around the same basic concept. It is not…
30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, as played by Alec Baldwin, had the same idea Apple has for their upcoming HDTV: ditch the remote and use your voice to control your TV. However! His TV hilariously failed because the voice recognition software was too good. Donaghy’s VoAct, short for Voice Activation, is so much like what we’re…
What do you get when you spend over $700 million on a new Swedish party house for your servers? This. 300,000 feet of buzzing, scalding Facebook servers in a spot so cold, they can just let the air in. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-data-center-goes-arctic-for-chilling-effect-5853819 The climate-cooled farm will suck enough electricity to power up to 40,000 American homes, but…
iHome hasn’t had the best rep for putting out stellar products for a while, but its new fully-wireless and rechargeable iW1, which was announced alllll the way back at CES, actually looks pretty awesome. The iW1 uses the AirPlay or the iHome Connect app to stream audio over your Wi-Fi network from iTunes or an…
Since the price of gold is like a bazillion dollars these days, I want to surround myself with as much of it as I can. So that means even fake gold, like this weird ass edible gold paint you spray on food to get flossy, is good with me. The edible gold spray paint is…
Samsung has already demoed its flexible OLED displays as seen up top, but now they’re promising them in phone form, possibly in the “earlier part” of 2012. Does anyone want this? Samsung phones like the impending Galaxy Nexus already have a curved glass screen—but a truly flexible display might make the process easier. Or perhaps…
Battery performance on the iPhone 4S isn’t quite as good as it was on the iPhone 4. Some chalk it up to the more power hungry dual-core processor, which makes sense. Kind of. But others are attributing the problems to early bugs related to iOS 5 power management, or the unnecessary use of GPS location…
Redbox, the easiest way to rent a movie for a buck a day, is getting a price hike. And it’s a 20% increase! Which makes the price of a Redbox DVD rental a more inconvenient $1.20. Bye, bye dollar days. It’s something to do with debit card fees. Blu-rays ($1.50) and video games ($2) will…
Following the rumor that Facebook plans to offer retro photo filters, Google+ is actually offering them right now, which of course is going to totally ruin photo filters for everyone. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-kill-photo-filters-for-everyone-5834133 In addition to a bunch of less nostalgic photo effects, there will be filters that will make your photos look like they were cross…
Are you in the mood to have your face judged by a somewhat-busted Playboy playmate? Would you like to do so without having to find and approach her? Perfect! The Rating Game lets you do just that. This sounds fun! Hope Dworaczyk, who according to a cursory Google Image Search looked a lot better before…
Post-9/11, New York State legislators decided an enormous casino, opening today, would help the devastated economy. Unfortunately, some pesky laws prohibiting gaming got in the way. No problem! Just replace all the humans with robots. It’s like Vegas on Mars. Well, not Mars—Queens, actually. But the combination of requisite casino artificial light and robot card-dealing…
That Bill Gates, he’s such a joker. Apparently you shouldn’t bother attempting to be a billionaire like him; after a million, it’s pretty much the same. I think Roman Abramovich might disagree, what with his frigate-sized yachts, but we get you Bill. [GeekWire via Gizmodo UK] Our newest offspring Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the…
Nerd Facebook Google+ has added another collection of decent features to its web interface, now showing “What’s Hot” on the network and building “Ripples” infographics to show how posts have been shared with other users. The changes aren’t immediately noticeable. The What’s Hot section appears at the bottom of your Stream and consists of a…
As part of the recent Engineering Frosh 2011 event, student engineers at the University of British Columbia answered an age-old question that every aspiring scientist must ask himself, “What happens when I mix these two things and throw it?” [Youtube]
You’re the patient? Excellent, please lie down on this table. I’ll be your doctor today but will be working from the next room, remotely controlling the needle-wielding robot above you—I’ll try not to sneeze! Just kidding. So, who’s ready for some eye surgery? The device above is the brainchild of Thijs Meenink, a PhD student…
It’s 2:30am. You’re blind drunk and desperately trying to log into your FB account on your phone—ya know, to see if that hottie from the last bar Friended you yet—but your damn beer sausage fingers entered the wrong password one too many times. What’s a lush to do? Under a new program that Facebook announced…